It is my sense that the most effective, sustained work can be done when there is a give and take of divergent and convergent thinking, when generation and focus play well together. I find, however, that when I am in a mode of divergent thinking, I am not able to simply switch over to a mode of convergent thinking. I revolt at the thought of “sitting down and doing the work,” or of wrangling my ideas into single file. Similarly, when I am in a mode of convergent thinking, I am not particularly open to pausing to “try something else.”
Can there be a consistency when in the mode of divergent thinking, or an openness to multiple directions when in the mode of convergent thinking? In other words, instead of the give and take being a switching back and forth, can it be a presence of one in the other, similar to the black-in-white and white-in-black of the traditional yin-yang symbol?
I imagine so, but I do not always experience my own thinking working in that way. Rather, I can lose patience with myself when my modes of thinking do not play well together…as now, when I have come up with many networked thoughts in response to an academic call for papers, but I am frustrated by my failing efforts to weave the connective tissue of explanation.
“I can lose patience with myself.” Alan Watts might chide, “Who is the I? Where is the myself?”